COLT, a leading European provider of business communications, has won two prestigious Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) ‘Carrier Ethernet Service Provider of the Year’ awards: one for ‘Best Service Portfolio – EMEA’ and the overall ‘Service Provider of the Year – EMEA’. This is the fifth year running that COLT has collected an MEF accolade.

Presented at Carrier Ethernet World Congress, the official event of the MEF in Berlin, the awards commend COLT on its comprehensive Ethernet services portfolio, market success and extensive coverage.

“Winning two MEF awards this year for ‘Best Product Portfolio’ and the top award for ‘Service Provider of the Year’ is a great achievement and reflects our focus on delivering the best Ethernet solutions for European businesses,” said Dr Alireza Mahmoodshahi, Chief Technology Officer at COLT. “The development of Ethernet technology continues at a fast pace and customer demand is increasing rapidly. In the last year we have completed the deployment our Next Generation Ethernet platform that enables us to enhance our services still further with faster provisioning times, greater flexibility and new features for customers.”

COLT has long-standing expertise in Ethernet services and 80 percent of its top 500 customers already use its Ethernet services. Ethernet services provide manageable, scalable and flexible solutions to support an organisation’s developing business needs. COLT’s Ethernet portfolio includes its any-to-any service, Ethernet Private Network (E-PN), and features including Classes of Service and enhanced resilience. COLT has also deployed ‘Ethernet in the First Mile’ technology at its unbundled exchanges in 12 countries to offer customers who depend on copper connections a higher-speed, ‘fibre-like’ telecommunications service.

The MEF is a global industry alliance comprising more than 145 organisations including telecommunications service providers, cable MSOs, network equipment/software manufacturers, semiconductors vendors and testing organisations. The MEF’s mission is to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Carrier-class Ethernet networks and services. The MEF develops Carrier Ethernet technical specifications and implementation agreements to promote interoperability and deployment of Carrier Ethernet worldwide. The judging panel for the EMEA MEF awards comprised a combination of seasoned industry analysts and trade press.